Article contents
Classifying Citizens in Nationalist China during World War II, 1937–1941*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 March 2011
Abstract
This paper argues that the first phase of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945 saw a significant change in the relationship between state and society in China, leading to a greater use of techniques of classification of the citizenry for purposes of welfare provision and mobilization through propaganda, methods until recently more associated with the Communists than with their Nationalist rivals. The paper draws on materials from Sichuan, the key province for wartime resistance, showing that the use of identity cards and welfare provision regulations were part of a process of integrating refugees from occupied China into the wider wartime society, and that propaganda campaigns were deployed to persuade the local indigenous population to support wartime state initiatives. Although Nationalist efforts to mobilize the population in wartime were flawed and partial, they marked a significant change in the conception of Chinese citizenship.
- Type
- Part I: Experiencing China's War with Japan: World War II, 1937–1945
- Information
- Modern Asian Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 2: China in World War II, 1937–1945: Experience, Memory, and Legacy , March 2011 , pp. 243 - 275
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011
References
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10 This author's emphasis.
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13 Culp, Synthesizing Citizenship, p. 1837. These terms all carry the meaning of ‘citizen’, but as Culp notes, they relate respectively to the role of the citizen as an actor within the state; in terms of public status; and in terms of urban role.
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25 Chiang Kai-shek, Fang Zhi diji hongzha gao ge sheng shi zhengfu ji quanguo guominshu [Letter to the provincial and city governments and the whole citizenry of the country regarding defence against enemy air-raids], in Zongtong Jiang: http://www.chungcheng.org.tw/thought/class07/0013/0007.htm [Accessed 16 December 2010], p. 56.
26 RG08 (Box 173, Folder 7, M. M. Rue papers), pp. 5–6, Yale University Divinity School Library.
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37 Sichuan Provincial Archives (hereafter SPA) Min [i.e.: Minguo-Republican era files] 38 [Files relating to conferences of the Sichuan Party cadres] Folder 2/614 (6 April, 1939).
38 SPA 38/2/614 (June, 1940).
39 SPA 38/2/614 (14 July, 1939).
40 SPA 38/2/614 (November, 1939).
41 SPA 38/2/614 (June, 1940).
42 SPA 38/2/614 (June, 1940).
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid.
46 See Plum, M. C. (2006). ‘Unlikely Heirs: War Orphans During the Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1945’, Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford University, Stanford.
47 SPA 38/2/1737 (21 November, 1938).
48 Liu, ‘A Whole Nation Walking’, pp. 260–262, notes this phenomenon also. See also Lincoln, ‘The Rural and Urban at War,’ on the way in which conditions in the Yangtze delta calmed down in the months following the Japanese occupation.
49 SPA 38/2/614 (15 April, 1938).
50 SPA 38/2/614 (10 January, 1940).
51 SPA 38/2/1737 (3 March, 1939).
52 SPA 38/2/614 (June, 1940).
53 Harrison, Making of the Republican Citizen, p. 241.
54 Hung, C.-T. (1994). War and Popular Culture, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, pp. 221–270Google Scholar.
55 SPA Min 50 [Files relating to provincial mobilization committees] Folder 23, pp. 47–48 (4 April, 1939).
56 See van de Ven, War and Nationalism, pp. 131–169.
57 On Nationalist Party politics of anti-superstition, Nedostup, R. (2009). Superstitious Regimes: Religion and the Politics of Chinese Modernity, Harvard East Asia Center, Cambridge, MassachusettsGoogle Scholar.
58 SPA Min 50/23, pp. 47–48 (4 April, 1939).
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60 SPA Min 50/23, p. 17 (July, 1939).
61 Ibid.
62 See, for instance, Hung, War and Popular Culture, pp. 221–285. Recent work that addresses the question of culture in the Nationalist regions includes: Xie, X. (2001). Chongqing wenhuashi [A cultural history of Chongqing], Chongqing chubanshe, Chongqing, pp. 260–343; and Tang, Z. et al. (2004). Zhongguo xibu kangzhan wenhuashi [A cultural history of western China during the War of Resistance], Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe, Beijing and Sun Yatsen Research Group (Chongqing branch) (2005). Chongqing kangzhan wenhuashi [A cultural history of Chongqing during the War of Resistance], Tuanjie chubanshe, Beijing.
63 SPA Min 50/23 (22 July, 1939).
64 van de Ven, War and Nationalism, pp. 255–258.
65 SPA Min 50/23 (22 July, 1939).
66 Author unknown (1996). ‘Kangzhan baofa hou Nanjing guomin zhengfu guofang lianxi huiyi jilu’, p. 30.
67 SPA Min 50/23 (22 July, 1939).
68 See, for instance, Glosser, S. (2002). ‘“The Truths I Have Learned”: Nationalism, Family Reform, and Male Identity in China's New Culture Movement, 1916–1922’, in Brownell, S. and Wasserstrom, J., eds. Chinese Femininities/Chinese Masculinities: A Reader, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, pp. 120–144CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
69 SPA Min 50/23 (3 February, 1939).
70 Ibid.
71 On mobilization of women in the Nationalist areas, see Li, D., Echoes of Chongqing, pp. 20–1.
72 Ibid.
73 SPA Min 113/6 (1944–1945) contains details of the effectiveness of health and hygiene reforms at the county level in Sichuan in the later war years.
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